Here's a link I found to the History Channel and their programs on Christmas. I have just recently "discovered" the History Channel and found lots of programs, individual shows, and series that hold my interest.

“I love you!” “Daddy, I was in the school play!” “We’re so proud of you, Son.”

When you make it possible for a soldier to make a free call home for the Holidays, there’s no telling what will pass between him and his loved ones. But one thing will be certain. You’ll have done exactly what the Holidays are all about: bringing warmth and cheer to the people who need it most – our brave servicemen and women who miss their families. And to the families who can hear for themselves that Daddy or Mommy is doing all right.

You can’t give out prepaid phone cards yourself. But that’s okay. Every year, the USO hands out thousands of cards to our soldiers so they can call home. We’ve seen the smiles on their faces when they take a card. Sometimes we even get to see the big, wide, silly grins when they make the call.

Just a little contribution goes a long way. A $10 phone card lasts for thirty-minutes—time for plenty of catching up. A $20 phone card lasts a whole hour. Please give whatever you can.

~~~~~~~~~

Kitten says: Go and donate. These are the people who are making a huge sacrifice in being away from their loved ones during he most family oriented holiday on our calendar. I can't tell you how good you'll feel to know that you've provided a connection between a someone in our military and his or her family.Just do it.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Did You Know?

According to a study conducted by the Beacon Hill Institute of Boston for the FairTax campaign, charitable donations would increase by approximately 0.89 percent (compared with the rate of contribution if the current system continues) immediately after the FairTax is enacted and would further increase by 2.4 percent within ten years and 4.99 percent after twenty years.

The FairTax campaign will be taking our message to the heart of Congressional power over the income tax system in the coming weeks and months.

At the center of Congressional power over the federal tax code is the House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Rep. Charles Rangel of New York City. The power to pick winners and losers in the current tax system, grant tax favors, punish political opponents, manipulate citizen and business behavior, and amend the tax code itself rests with this most powerful House committee.

Power over a tax system that collects more than two-and-a-half trillion dollars a year makes members of this committee among the most influential in the Congressional hierarchy. They are highly sought after by tax lobbyists seeking favors, business leaders seeking relief, and interest groups with a tax agenda. It is a power that is jealously guarded by Congress and has been actively used by those on the Ways and Means Committee.

Since historic tax reform and simplification efforts by Ronald Reagan in the early 1980’s, tens of thousands of changes to the tax code have occurred--averaging about three per day for each day Congress has been in session. Staffers on this committee are among the best paid in Congress; time on the Ways and Means Committee almost guarantees lucrative future salaries from Washington, D.C. tax lobby firms for these staffers and retiring or defeated members of Congress. These are powerful incentives against adoption of the FairTax, which eliminates both the role of tax lobbyists and Congressional manipulation of the tax code. It makes all the more remarkable the courage and vision of John Linder, the original House sponsor of FairTax legislation, who serves on the Ways and Means Committee and provides hope that reason and merit can trump Congressional self-interest.

The FairTax has the potential to quickly heal the national economic crisis, create millions of needed jobs, attract trillions of dollars of new investment into our economy, and a establish tax system that is fair, simple, and transparent. These merits of the FairTax serve as a powerful rallying cry to those who elect members of Congress serving on this and every other Congressional committee. With the help of hundreds of thousands of FairTax supporters, we will be bringing these arguments to the Ways and Means Committee over the coming months.

We begin with a sensible and respectful request to those who are elected to represent us: schedule an open, fair, and balanced hearing on the merits and potential of the FairTax. Allow experts and citizens alike an equal time with detractors to explain and defend the research and philosophy of a better national tax system. Together, we will raise the voice of FairTax supporters across the nation in seeking a fair hearing on how the FairTax can help every American, create a new era of American growth and prosperity, and eliminate the destructive effects of a badly broken national tax system.

ABOUT THE FAIRTAX

The FairTax plan is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including a progressive national retail sales tax, a prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar federal revenue neutrality, and, through companion legislation, the repeal of the 16th Amendment.

The FairTax plan is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including a progressive national retail sales tax, a prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar federal revenue neutrality, and, through companion legislation, the repeal of the 16th Amendment.

Two of the Navy SEALs who in September captured the terrorist who masterminded the murder of four civilian food delivery contractors in Iraq, burned their bodies, dragged them through the streets and then hung them from a bridge in Fallujah were arraigned today - Pearl Harbor Day! - for allegedly punching his in the stomach and giving him a fat lip. A third SEAL will be arraigned later.

Their court martial trials are scheduled for next month.

This, my fellow Americans, is a FAR GREATER outrage than Harry Reid shooting off his mouth. The White House, the Pentagon, the Defense Department and the Congress should all be ashamed of themselves for letting this continue.

Muth's News & Views

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, my, so this terrorist was punched in the belly and got a fat lip. You know, I really feel for him...NOT. He caused the deaths of four people and the Seals who captured him are awaiting Court Martial for punching him. Those Seals deserve medals because that's ALL they did to him. If they are found guilty, the United States is indeed in a lot of trouble.

I really can't describe how angry I am that these fine men are facing what they are facing simply because they punched this....this...person. Under normal circumstances, I don't hold with roughing up a captured person, either by Law Enforcement or by the Military. I think it's beneath their dignity to do so. But there are times when I happily cheer them on. And this is one of them. The four who were killed were civilians, not even military, trying to help the citizens of Iraq. Doing what amounted to humanitarian work and for that they were killed and then their bodies mutilated. Some fine citizens of Iraq - the people they were trying to help - plotted, planned, and then carried it out. Why do we bother? Sometimes I wonder.

I just hope the officers hearing this Court Martial don't listen to the media who are howling for the skins of these Seals. The most they deserve is maybe some loss of pay or whatever is the very least punishment available. This - person - sustained less injury than if he had been in a bar brawl.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took his GOP-blasting rhetoric to a new level Monday, comparing Republicans who oppose health care reform to lawmakers who clung to the institution of slavery more than a century ago.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took his GOP-blasting rhetoric to a new level Monday, comparing Republicans who oppose health care reform to lawmakers who clung to the institution of slavery more than a century ago.

The Nevada Democrat, in a sweeping set of accusations on the Senate floor, also compared health care foes to those who opposed women's suffrage and the civil rights movement -- even though it was Sen. Strom Thurmond, then a Democrat, who unsuccessfully tried to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and it was Republicans who led the charge against slavery.

Senate Republicans on Monday called Reid's comments "offensive" and "unbelievable."

But Reid argued that Republicans are using the same stalling tactics employed in the pre-Civil War era.

"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, 'slow down, stop everything, let's start over.' If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right," Reid said Monday. "When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough.'"

He continued: "When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn't quite right.

"When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."

That seemed to be a reference to Thurmond's famous 1957 filibuster -- the late senator switched parties several years later.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Reid's remarks were over the top.

"That is extremely offensive," he told Fox News. "It's language that should never be used, never be used. ... Those days are not here now."

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., suggested Reid was starting to "crack" under the pressure of the health care reform debate.

Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.

In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.

George Bush Jr didn't fail so much as he was perceived to have been too much of a patrician while being uncomfortable with his more conservative allies. Yet George Bush Sr is still perceived as a man of uncommon decency, loyal to the enduring American character of rugged self-determination, free markets, and generosity. George W will eventually be treated more kindly by historians as one whose potential was squashed by his own compromise of conservative principles, in some ways repeating the mistakes of his father, while ignoring many lessons in executive leadership he should have learned at Harvard Business School. Of course George W could never quite overcome being dogged from the outset by half of the nation convinced he was electorally illegitimate -- thus aiding the resurgence of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.

But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?

No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us. He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, Reagan.

But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task-- all contributory of course. It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience.

In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012: "For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second term, I could have offended you too."

Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state--staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.

Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.

[editor's note: The author is not the not the same person as Geoffrey P Hunt, who works at the Institute for Scientific Analysis as a senior research scientist.]

This article is true and was submitted to a 1999 Louisville Sentinel contest to find out who had the wildest Christmas dinner. It won first prize.

As a joke, my brother used to hang a pair of panty hose over his fireplace before Christmas. He said all he wanted was for Santa to fill them. What they say about Santa checking the list twice must be true because every Christmas morning, although Jay's kids' stockings were overflowed, his poor pantyhose hung sadly empty.

One year I decided to make his dream come true. I put on sunglasses and went in search of an inflatable love doll. They don't sell those things at Wal-Mart. I had to go to an adult bookstore downtown. If you've never been in an X-rated store, don't go. You'll only confuse yourself. I was there an hour saying things like, "What does this do?" "You're kidding me!" "Who would buy that?" Finally, I made it to the inflatable doll section. I wanted to buy a standard, uncomplicated doll that could also substitute as a passenger in my truck so I could use the car pool lane during rush hour. Finding what I wanted was difficult. Love dolls come in many different models. The top of the line, according to the side of the box, could do things I'd only seen in a book on animal husbandry. I settled for 'Lovable Louise." She was at the bottom of the price scale. To call Louise a "doll" took a huge leap of imagination.

On Christmas Eve, with the help of an old bicycle pump, Louise came to life. My sister-in-law was in on the plan and let me in during the wee morning hours, long after Santa had come and gone, I filled the dangling pantyhose with Louise's pliant legs and bottom. I also ate some cookies and drank what remained of a glass of milk on a nearby tray. I went home, and giggled for a couple of hours. The next morning my brother called to say that Santa had been to his house and left a present that had made him VERY happy but had left the dog confused. She would bark, start to walk away, then come back and bark some more.

We all agreed that Louise should remain in her pantyhose so the rest of the family could admire her when they came over for the traditional Christmas dinner. My grandmother noticed Louise the moment she walked in the door. "What the hell is that?" she asked. My brother quickly explained, "It's a doll." "Who would play with something like that?" Granny snapped. I had several candidates in mind, but kept my mouth shut. "Where are her clothes?" Granny continued. "Boy, that turkey sure smells nice, Gran," Jay said, trying to steer her into the dining room. But Granny was relentless. "Why doesn't she have any teeth?" Again, I could have answered, but why would I? It was Christmas and no one wanted to ride in the back of the ambulance saying,"Hang on Granny! Hang on!" My grandfather, a delightful old man with poor eyesight, sidled up to me and said, " Hey, who's the naked gal by the fireplace?" I told him she was Jay's friend.

A few minutes later I noticed Grandpa by the mantel, talking to Louise. Not just talking, but actually flirting. It was then that we realized this might be Grandpa's last Christmas at home.

The dinner went well. We made the usual small talk about who had died, who was dying, and who should be killed, when suddenly Louise made a noise that sounded a lot like my father in the bathroom in the morning. Then she lurched from the pantyhose, flew around the room twice, and fell in a heap in front of the sofa. The cat screamed. I passed cranberry sauce through my nose, and Grandpa ran across the room, fell to his knees, and began administering mouth to mouth resuscitation. My brother fell back over his chair and wet his pants and Granny threw down her napkin, stomped out of the room, and sat in the car.

It was indeed a Christmas to treasure and remember.

Later in my brother's garage, we conducted a thorough examination and found the cause of Louise's collapse. We discovered that Louise had suffered from a hot amber to the back of her right thigh. Fortunately, thanks to a wonder drug called duct tape, we restored her to perfect health. Louise went on to star in several bachelor party movies. I think Grandpa still calls her whenever he can get out of the house.

Sunday, December 06, 2009

Letter from Jesus about Christmas --

It has come to my attention that many of you are upset that folks are taking My name out of the season. Maybe you've forgotten that I wasn't actually born during this time of the year and that it was some of your predecessors who decided to celebrate My birthday on what was actually a time of pagan festival. Although I do appreciate being remembered anytime.

How I personally feel about this celebration can probably be most easily understood by those of you who have been blessed with children of your own. I don't care what you call the day. If you want to celebrate My birth, just GET ALONG AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

Now, having said that let Me go on. If it bothers you that the town in which you live doesn't allow a scene depicting My birth, then just get rid of a couple of Santas and snowmen and put in a small Nativity scene on your own front lawn If all My followers did that there wouldn't be any need for such a scene on the town square because there would be many of them all around town.

Stop worrying about the fact that people are calling the tree a holiday tree, instead of a Christmas tree. It was I who made all trees. You can remember Me anytime you see any tree. Decorate a grape vine if you wish: I actually spoke of that one in a teaching, explaining who I am in relation to you and what each of our tasks were. If you have forgotten that one, look up John 15: 1 - 8.

If you want to give Me a present in remembrance of My birth here is my wish list. Choose something from it:

1. Instead of writing protest letters objecting to the way My birthday is being celebrated, write letters of love and hope to soldiers away from home. They are terribly afraid and lonely this time of year. I know, they tell Me all the time.

2. Visit someone in a nursing home. You don't have to know them personally. They just need to know that someone cares about them.

3. Instead of writing the President complaining about the wording on the cards his staff sent out this year, why don't you write and tell him that you'll be praying for him and his family this year. Then follow up. It will be nice hearing from you again.

4. Instead of giving your children a lot of gifts you can't afford and they don't need, spend time with them. Tell them the story of My birth, and why I came to live with you down here. Hold them in your arms and remind them that I love them.

5 Pick someone that has hurt you in the past and forgive him or her.

6. Did you know that someone in your town will attempt to take their own life this season because they feel so alone and hopeless? Since you don't know who that person is, try giving everyone you meet a warm smile; it could make the difference.

7. Instead of nit picking about what the retailer in your town calls the holiday, be patient with the people who work there. Give them a warm smile and a kind word. Even if they aren't allowed to wish you a "Merry Christmas" that doesn't keep you from wishing them one. Then stop shopping there on Sunday. If the store didn't make so much money on that day they'd close and let their employees spend the day at home with their families

8. If you really want to make a difference, support a missionary-- especially one who takes My love and Good News to those who have never heard My name.

9. Here's a good one. There are individuals and whole families in your town who not only will have no "Christmas" tree, but neither will they have any presents to give or receive. If you don't know them, buy some food and a few gifts and give them to the Salvation Army or some other charity which believes in Me and they will make the delivery for you.

10. Finally, if you want to make a statement about your belief in and loyalty to Me, then behave like a Christian. Don't do things in secret that you wouldn't do in My presence. Let people know by your actions that you are one of mine.

Don't forget; I am God and can take care of Myself. Just love Me and do what I have told you to do. I'll take care of all the rest. Check out the list above and get to work; time is short. I'll help you, but the ball is now in your court. And do have a most blessed Christmas with all those whom you love and remember:

I LOVE YOU,

JESUS

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm labeling this "Columnists and Commentators" for what I think are obvious reasons.

I can't improve on this, so I won't even comment other than to say, You rock, Jesus!!